Easter 2026 - Reading #3 - Fear of the Lord

Saint Augustine reflects on the relationship between fear and love in his Expositions on the Psalms: "There are two kinds of fear. There is a fear which perfect love casts out; and there is another fear which endures forever. The fear which is cast out is the fear of punishment. The fear which abides is the fear of chastity, the fear a bride has of offending her husband, not because he will strike her, but because she loves him. This is the fear that is not opposed to love but springs from it."

Augustine continues: "When you begin to love God, you begin to fear offending Him, not because you dread His vengeance, but because you dread losing His friendship. This fear is the guardian of love. Take it away, and love has no hedge around it, no protection. This fear says: I have tasted something so good, so sweet, so infinite, that the very thought of being separated from it fills me with a holy dread."

For Augustine, the fear of the Lord is thus the natural companion of someone who has experienced the goodness of God and cannot bear the thought of living without it. It is the fear of the lover, not the slave, the reverence born from intimacy, not distance.

Three days into the Easter season, Augustine gives the fear of the Lord its most intimate expression: it is the fear of the beloved. Not the cringing of a slave before a master, but the tenderness of someone who has found something so precious that the thought of losing it produces a kind of holy trembling. This is the fear that Easter intensifies, not diminishes. Having seen what God was willing to do, the cross, the grave, the shattering of death itself, how could we not tremble at the thought of taking such love for granted?

During Lent, many of us experienced a version of this. The fasting and self-denial created a space in which we could feel, perhaps for the first time in a long while, how much we depend on God and how easily we wander from him. The disciplines cleared away the noise and revealed the quiet truth: we are made for communion with God, and everything less than that communion leaves us restless and unsatisfied. Augustine knew this from the depths of his own wandering heart.

Now, in the Easter light, this awareness does not produce guilt but gratitude. The fear of the Lord in the Easter season is the realization that we have been given something of infinite value, the friendship of the living God, and the determination not to squander it. It is the care a man takes with his most precious relationship. Not anxiety, but attentiveness. Not terror, but tenderness. As we continue to receive the gifts of the Spirit, let this tender vigilance remain. It will guard everything else the Spirit gives.

Walk this season with us.